Will Bunch

STAFF COLUMNIST

Will Bunch has worked at the Daily News for 20-plus years and is now senior writer. Since 2005, he’s written the uber-opinionated, fair-but-dangerously unbalanced opinion blog "Attytood," covering a range of topics (but mostly politics and the media these days); it’s been named best blog in the state by the Associated Press Managing Editors and best blog in the city by Philadelphia Magazine. He’s also authored three full-length books and three Amazon Kindle Single e-books, including 2015’s The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream. Prior to coming to Philadelphia, he worked at New York Newsday, where he was part of a team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting.

It wasn't supposed to me like this. In 1965, John Lewis and a small band of activists who'd been trying, unsuccessfully, to register black citizens to vote in Selma, Alabama, tried to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and onto the state capital of Montomery, to demand their rights. They were beaten back by a flying wedge of savage state troopers with clubs in their hands and hatred in their hearts. The next time, they crossed the bridge, kneeled and prayed, and turned around. The third time -- with the protection of the federal government in Washington -- they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and broke into the daylight. They made it to Montgomery, and their spirit marched on to Washington, where the Civil Rights Act was passed and signed into law. Freedom had made it to the other side.

Made no mistake -- liberty was tossed backwards yet again yesterday. This time it took just five men in their cruel formation; they did not wear hard blue helmets but soft black robes. Their weapon of choice was a laptop -- proving that in the 21st Century, the keyboard can be as mighty as the nightstick, but their hearts were every bit as hard as the thick blue line on the wrong side of the Alabama River.